CT city hopes to right wrongs of 1960s urban renewal. Here’s the plan to remedy flawed highway infrastructure

The state’s final report on its three-year, Greater Hartford Mobility Study lays out plans for a dramatic change in the area’s transportation system but it first acknowledges the sobering — and lingering — reality: the damage done by 1960s-era urban renewal and interstate highway construction.

In the Hartford area, largely white, affluent suburban communities benefited — and thrived — from the highways at the expense of Black, brown and low-income residents who lived in the neighborhoods torn apart by Interstate 84 and Interstate 91, the report notes.

“Property values around the highway projects declined, and those areas became the only refuge for the region’s most vulnerable residents who could not afford to live anywhere else,” according to the report released by the state Department of Transportation.

“Those determined not to give up their community fought for incremental improvements while reconciling with the reality that staying meant enduring long-term health impacts, reduced access to employment, higher transportation costs and higher rates of traffic fatalities,” according to the report.

Josh D. Morgan, a DOT spokesman, said Tuesday it was essential to address the legacy of interstate highway construction in the report. The effects are still being felt in Hartford and in communities around the country.

“Reconciling and remedying the impacts our highway infrastructure has had in the Greater Hartford region has been part of our conversations with members of the community over the last several years,” Morgan said, in a statement. “It was essential to address this directly in the final report and clearly state the interstate system came at a severe cost to some of the most vulnerable residents.”

“Moving forward, our transportation infrastructure’s potential impacts on communities will not be overlooked,” Morgan said. “The safety and mobility of all roadway users will be included in the design and construction of all projects.”

The study — a blueprint for correcting many of the mistakes of urban renewal — includes big-ticket highway projects such as moving the notorious I-84/I-91 interchange; lowering and rerouting I-84 to reconnect Hartford neighborhoods; and capping portions of I-91 to once again link Hartford with its riverfront. In East Hartford, a tangle of highways and ramps just opposite downtown Hartford would be simplified to open up space for future development.

The projects may take decades to unfold and cost tens of billions of dollars in public funds.

The study also includes dozens of smaller projects that could happen sooner and cost less, some running in the millions or less. Those include strengthening bicycle networks around CTfastrak and Hartford Line stations; reconfiguring Hartford’s Pulaski Circle; and redesigning East Hartford’s wide, heavily-traveled, Main Street thoroughfare.

These projects are all intended to better balance the needs of motor vehicles with pedestrians, bicyclists, and public transportation.

The report notes the interstate highway construction did make travel easier in Greater Hartford and helped for “the quick and efficient movement of goods and services.” But the study also points out that the highways, urban renewal and the rise of the suburbs combined to “pull investment out of central business districts and divide communities.”

The benefits “came at a major cost. Infrastructure projects disconnected neighborhoods, displaced residents, destroyed cultural heritage, cut Hartford off from its riverfront, and took away investment to support biking, walking and taking transit,’ the report says.

In Hartford, the recent construction of Dunkin’ Park and the on-going development of apartments around it are an attempt to reverse the decline of an area hit hard by the construction of I-84 more than two generations ago.

U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D-1, has long championed burying I-91 in a tunnel as it passes by the Connecticut River in Hartford, close to the former Colt manufacturing complex and the East Armory topped with the blue, onion-shaped dome.

A lowered I-91 would reestablish a connection between Colt — now redeveloped into apartments, offices and retail space — and much of Hartford, but particularly the city’s northside neighborhoods, to the Connecticut River, Larson has argued.

On Monday, Larson, speaking at a press conference at Colt on its future as a national historical park, noted how close the area is to the Connecticut River.

“Just beyond that dome as you all know is I-91, the levees and the Connecticut River,” Larson said. “More than a 50-year goal, to recapture that riverfront and to reconnect this great city of ours is all tied together…We’re going to get this right, and take back that river.”

The mobility study, which focuses on all modes of transportation rather than just the motor vehicle, grew out of an earlier study by the DOT that was seeking options to replace the aging I-84 viaduct in Hartford. The mobility study had many of the same goals, including reconnecting neighborhoods and easing congestions, and drew on earlier plans that included relocating the I-84/I-91 interchange.

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.